Steve Knopper takes a close look at the music business in his new book, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. Ars digs into the book, which argues that the major labels' collapse wasn't caused (mostly) by P2P.

Some of the $7.2 billion Congress approved to fund broadband deployment and adoption could begin flowing to grant recipients as early as April. But with key terms in the statute left undefined, the two agencies in charge of the cash will have to make a welter of decisions that will determine who's eligible for a piece of the pie—and what they'll do with it.

At the IETF meeting in San Francisco this week, the Internet Society told the press about the virtues of the next generation Internet Protocol, while the IETF looked at ways to keep IPv4 running when address space runs out.

A few months back, the Texas state school board gave preliminary approval to new science standards that got rid of language that required classroom discussion of "the strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. Now, that decision may be revisited at the same time that bills have been introduced in the state legislature that would undermine two previous pro-science decisions.

It's been a few months since AMD's Shanghai processors launched, so how are they doing in the market? Even more important than that is whether or not Shanghai can hold the line against Intel's upcoming Nehalem-EP. AMD's new chips are good, there's no doubt of that—but are they good enough?

The Songwriters Association of Canada has listened to the criticism of its 2007 plan to legitimize the file-sharing of copyrighted songs, and it's back with Plan 2.0. The big change? Participation for both fans and artists would be voluntary.

For the security-conscious, the idea that malware, viruses, and Trojans could be lurking around every digital corner is frightening enough. Now, a duo of Argentinian researchers has demonstrated how code can be embedded and flashed into a system's BIOS. We've been down this road before, but it's definitely much harder to detect and root out such attacks.

Microsoft sat down with Ars at GDC 2009 to announce its upcoming additions to the Games for Windows platform, along with more protection for publishers. They want you to know that this isn't DRM, and they don't think you're a bad person. They just want you to buy the games.

Red-light cameras have generated a great deal of controversy over their tendency to turn into profit centers instead of being focused on actually increasing citizen safety. Now the state of Mississippi has banned them altogether. This could be the beginning of a national trend, or the issue could be brought before a judge.

Google has introduced a couple of changes to how it displays search results, which it says will help users find the information they need more efficiently. This may be true, though another goal may be to keep users on the site longer instead of clicking through to other sites.

Skype has become the world's single largest provider of international calls, surpassing even incumbent telcos like AT&T. Unfortunately for the company, few of these calls generate any revenue, and corporate parent eBay grows impatient.